Aiden’s distraction works, and her eyes light up as she explains what happened.

“When we got there the guy said that they do have cameras, but if we wanted to look at them we’d have to get a warrant! A warrant! Can you believe that? Like, can you not just help a girl out? But obviously we didn’t go all that way for nothing, so I told him to . . .”

The sound of Annalisa’s voice trails off as Aiden very casually leads her into the main part of the apartment as she tells her story, away from me and the cursed file.

As soon as she’s far enough away, I quickly shove the file into my bag.

I find my keys and hastily detach my house key from my car keys, throwing my car keys back in my bag and making sure it’s completely closed so the file isn’t visible. I try to school my expression to look somewhat normal and walk out of the room.

“Found it.” I hold up the key in what I hope is a nonchalant manner, but Annalisa barely glances at me, still deep in her story.

“So, after we bought a bunch of garbage that he said wasn’t selling, tried to bribe him, and got Char to fake cry in an actually very convincing performance, he finally let us check the cameras.”

I throw my key on the coffee table and sit down beside her on the couch, catching Aiden’s eye and giving him a small nod to let him know I took care of the file.

“Luke was there, and he was very drunk. It was actually really sad and kind of embarrassing. I recorded it on my phone.”

She shows us the video, and she’s right. It is kind of sad. He can barely stand straight and stumbles around. He throws some money on the counter, shoves the receipt and change into his pocket with most of the change dropping on the floor, and somehow makes it outside without tripping. The camera view switches to outside the store, where Luke promptly leans over and throws up. He then stumbles out of view of the camera and the video stops.

“The time stamp when he walks off camera is 5:25. So I thought this would be good proof, you know, the guy is too drunk to even stand, let alone kill a guy. But stupid Julian had to be practical and remind me that it could technically be argued that he still had time to get to Aiden’s house and it doesn’t prove where he was at the actual time, so we still have some work to do.”

Annalisa looked so hopeful for a second. I can only imagine what was going through her mind when she thought this was the proof she needed to clear Luke’s name.

“Did you send it to Luke’s lawyer anyway?” Aiden asks.

“Of course I did, but we’re still going to figure out where he went after that.”